


A Quiver of Wyverns, Tossed from the Nest

by FeoplePeel



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Alternate Universe - Game of Thrones Fusion, Gen, Wyverns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 10:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18247868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeoplePeel/pseuds/FeoplePeel
Summary: Klaus learns about dragonfire firsthand. Violet acquires dolomite from a strange, new friend. Sunny cracks the code of the Horrible Handwriting. Fishstew is served at Lemonwood Hall. Larry (Your Waiter!) is tired.





	A Quiver of Wyverns, Tossed from the Nest

**Author's Note:**

> Cleaning my drive and I found a short fusion fic I wrote for [Liz](http://goddamnrey.tumblr.com/), fresh off the finale of ASOUE. Enjoy!

In the southernmost part of a land called the Brine, known as such for the sea that hugged its eastern shores, stood a castle called The Espoir. Klaus Baudelaire, who lived within its walls, knew a great many things; about the castle and its construction (stone, older than the oldest relative his father, Bertrand, could name). He knew also that Brine was once called Dorne and stretched to the eastern Flatlands via a smattering of islands that had been erased by erosion or carried somewhere on a whale’s back as his younger sister, Sunny, often joked between her own smattering of childish talk. He knew the wyverns his mother, Beatrice, corralled to feed every morning and every evening were some evolved crossbreed of snake and small, pitiable dragon.

All this he had learned from books or by asking politely, as young lords do.

That dragonfire could melt through the old, stone walls of The Espoir was something he learned by observation.

He hid in the hills behind Lemonwood Hall, hand clasped tight to the straight-faced, sniffling Sunny’s and watched beautiful, bright white flames dance around the halls of their home, light blue smoke trickling up to the sky like a signal, a sad sort of backwards downpour.

This was where Lord Snicket found them.

“Lord Klaus, Lady Sunny,” he nodded at each of them in turn. “I am so sorry about this tragic turn of events.”

“Our parents…?”

Jacques opened his mouth and chose to say nothing. He laid a hand on Klaus’ shoulder. In moments such as these, Klaus suspected, there wasn’t much to be said.

_Your parents have perished in a terrible fire._

“I have asked Lemony to fetch Lady Violet from the Sapphire Islands.”

“Wouldn’t she be safer there?” Klaus tried to fight the rising hope in his chest, his intention to think of his older sister’s well-being. Would House Quagmire want anything to do with them now, when their lands were scoured, their seat all but burned?

Soon, Violet would be home, they would be okay. _She_ would know what to do.

* * *

_Your parents have perished in a terrible fire._

Violet stared at the ribbon in her hand and considered pulling her hair up. She poured another jar of water into the back of the carriage instead, willing it through the mountain pass.

“Thank you,” Lemony nodded at her. His eyes were shot through with red. “Your ribbon is a handsome one.”

“It was my mother’s,” she said.

“Which simply lends to its beauty.”

Violet felt her eyes sting. “Thank you,” she repeated, though could not help but think _to lend_ meant its beauty could be returned.

She twisted the fabric in her hand, dirtied and dulled with age. It was a bright yellow when she was gifted it some four years ago, on her thirteenth name day. As a younger girl, she felt it possessed some magical qualities she did not, but she had never truly believed in magic. Even if she had, putting it on now would give her no more answers. A ribbon could not bring back the dead.

“Do you know what will be expected of me when I return?” she asked. When she spoke, Lemony seemed on the verge of sleep, but his immediate response suggested perhaps this was an illusion created in an attempt to get her to use her own carriage bed to rest.

“I apologise, milady, but I have told you all that I know.”

“Tell me again.”

“Jacques sent me to retrieve you under the assumption that Lord Bertrand and Lady Beatrice…,” he coughed into his hand before continuing. “Are either dead or incapacitated. A group from beyond the Schism made it past the blockades. They burnt The Espior with flames bright enough to see from shore to shore.”

“Are you certain?” Violet twisted her heels into the metal of the carriage. “About my parents?”

“No. We have the word of the house server, who was sent to fetch your brother and sister—”

“Klaus would have been out, helping Sunny catch food for her weekend lessons.”

“If they were in the walls of The Espior, then they are gone, as your castle fell from the place it stood. If they were nearby, they have been captured.” Lemony stopped speaking suddenly, eyes on her and wary. His expression softened. “And, as I said, that is all I know.”

She knew a bit more. She knew about the tunnels beneath her home—closed off, abandoned—and now purposely did not think of them for hope was a dangerous thing. She knew she was nearly of age to rule, though without her mother and father there to guide her the thought was too daunting to dwell on. And if Klaus and Sunny were gone too….  

Dragons were extinct and magic was not real. This was something she _thought_ she knew.

“Worry only about what we _know_ for now.” Lemony’s voice cut across her thoughts.

“I am not worried.” She sat up straighter. “I am filled with a deep melancholy about what has happened and what might be….”

He nodded, the movement slow and considering. “I _am_ worried. I am worried and I am melancholy, both.”

“Then I shall be both, also.”

“Sir,” The hatch above them opened and a woman with light red hair dipped her head down between them. “I’m afraid we’ve run into a problem along the road.”

The problem along the road was a group of three wyverns, wandered from their nest. The leader was a pale peach, its long nose firmly on the ground as it wound its way towards their carriage.

“What should we do?” The woman raised her bowgun to her shoulder, eyes forward and waiting for Lemony’s instruction. Lemony looked to Violet, tapped the back of her hand, which still clasped her ribbon in a loose hold.

This would be as good a time for it as any, she reasoned. The wyverns flames were not as powerful as the painters liked to exaggerate, but both Violet and her mother had lost inches of hair to violent coughing fits in the winter. She tied her hair back and took a tentative step forward.

The first did not look up, but the one just behind it—a larger, red beast, struck through with orange—stopped, and sat on its haunches, staring at her with wide, dark eyes. The last—a white creature, and the smallest of the lot—followed suite, choosing to curl up on itself in the middle of the road, snakelike.  

“Don’t shoot,” Violet ordered the woman behind her, hand raised slightly as she sidled past the snuffling peach wyvern. It ignored her entirely, nosing up the road towards the carriage and around it, paying careful attention to every wheel. When it seemed satisfactorily distracted, she turned her attention back to the red beast, holding her palm out flat.

Violet sometimes, incorrectly, called her mother a trainer. It was not because Lady Baudelaire had truly domesticated these wild creatures, or come up with some process of training in as such. It was only because she often stood in the middle of a nest of pony-sized, viper-like, fire-breathing creatures and beckoned Violet from the mouth of the cavern, where she stared in awe. It was because where the rest of them saw a breed of strange, near terrifying monsters, her mother had seen delightful creatures, with unique personalities. She called them adorable often.

This one had a triangle nose, like a true serpent, its eyes crossed to meet its nostrils. In her head, Violet called it Boxer. It fell on its front legs to half-walk, half-crawl its way to her, where it gave her hand a vigorous sniff. When it found no food there, it tried gumming around her fingers with its scaly, flat lips before pulling away, disappointed.

“Sorry,” she apologised quietly. “If you follow this road, there’s a stream fifteen miles back.”

A loud chirp sounded from behind her, where the peach wyvern with the longer nose than the rest had passed the carriage and was waiting, clearly impatient. Boxer passed her, and the others without a glance, to catch up with its companion. The white wyvern was younger, it’s stomach still egg-shaped and dragging the ground more so than the others. It had to use its tail to right itself, whipping it back forth and causing a stir on the dust of the road.

“Those may be some of the only wyverns left in the Brine,” Violet told Lemony as he helped her back into the carriage.

“Would you like to bring them with us?” Lemony raised a brow.

She shook her head. It was clear they were searching for something. She opened her mouth to say as much when a trilling noise interrupted her. She leaned forward, the upper half of her body out of the carriage, to see Boxer sitting by the back wheel with something hanging from its mouth. After a moment where nothing happened, the wyvern stepped forward, presenting it like a treasure.

It was a light red rock, nearly pink where the crystals scored down its middle. She passed it to Lemony.

“Dolomite,” he said, smiling for the first time since she’d seen his boat dock at the Quagmire’s vast estates. It was an expression she was more used to on the man, and one far more suited to him. “Rare, and an excellent fertilizer when ground down.”

Violet took the rock back, sliding it into her pocket. She turned to thank the wyvern, only to see three spots farther down the road. “Thank you,” she said, wiggling her fingers in their direction.

* * *

Sunny was outside with Missus Caliban when the steam carriage arrived, and therefore saw her before anyone else. She cut off her big sister at the legs with a hug, and Violet was too busy reveling in her relief to worry about the inevitable bruising on her shins. She knelt, wrapping Sunny in the tightest hug she could manage around a wriggling toddler. It was only a days ride from the Quagmire’s to the Brine, but she hadn’t seen her family in half a year.

Some she may never see again, she thought, arms tightening reflexively.

“Violet?”

Through the blonde wisps of Sunny’s hair, Violet could make out the running shape of her brother just before he bowled the two of them over, tackling them to the ground with a happy cry. He buried his face in her shoulder, pressing Sunny between them.

“Klaus!” Violet laughed when she caught her breath, head surfacing from the pile they had made of themselves. “Sunny,” she said in a gentler tone, extricating herself enough to see their faces. What a terrible few days for all of them. Sunny looked as though she’d not stopped crying, by the crust under her nose, and Klaus…

Violet pulled them close again.

* * *

Lemony led them to the Snicket’s manor, staying a respectful distance ahead of the siblings after allowing Missus Caliban a hug of her own.

“Mother and Father…?” Violet managed, when they were well along the path.

Klaus didn’t speak for a moment. “Larry brought us to Lemonwood Hall, where Lord Snicket found us. He promised to return with news.”

“The Snickets have been kind to us,” Violet said. She had stared across the carriage at the knight named Lemony and attempted to recall the bedtime stories her parents had told her of their own childhood. About Lemony she knew he had saved her father from a giant bird who had wandered into the wyvern cavern and that, once, he had courted her mother (though this she had learned from letters her mother was not as good at hiding as she thought). Kit, their sister, she knew had invented the hydro powered falls by her home, and traveled to the Reach to strengthen the blockades.

No stories so special about the eldest, Jacques, came to mind. Then Violet considered that he had cared for his family home since Lord Jacob Snicket’s death all those years ago, with no war, or famine, or uprising, but through innovation and civility, and thought that may be all she need know.   

“And Larry,” she said. “I am happy to hear he is alive, at least.”

“Our parents live too, I believe.” Klaus’ jaw clenched in childish obstinance. In a year or so Violet knew he would be handsome, like their father. “Was Quigley offended at your having to leave?”

Violet smiled into her free hand, as both she and Klaus each held tight to Sunny’s in one of their own between them. “He was appropriately upset by our loss. The Quagmires will be sending whatever help they can.”

Klaus let out a breath of relief, and Violet wanted to chastise him for his doubt. Quigley had been a perfect, young gentleman. Taking her hand and offering her a bounty of riches, and their marriage continued besides. His parents, while obviously worried, allowed him to lead. Violet would have none of it.

She would not have them saddled with their house’s burdens.  

* * *

Dinner that night was a fish stew. It seemed odd to Klaus to be eating like the whole of the world hadn’t changed around him. Then he’d look to his right, catch Violet sipping from her spoon with their mother’s same, delicate disposition, and feel some sense of order return to him.

There were enough rooms in Lemonwood Hall to have one to themselves, but so long separated from their sister, it was no surprise to Klaus when Sunny demanded to sleep with Violet, instead. She clung to Violet’s nightshirt and, when they reached Klaus’ door, he stared at them as though separated across a great distance once again, though only a few cobblestones existed between them.

Violet’s smile was kind. “Would you like us to stay in your room, Klaus?”

“If you think it would make you feel better, Violet,” he opened the door and shuffled inside.

Violet helped Sunny onto the bed, taking up a spot for herself on the stone window seat and pulling her knees up to her chest. She could not have grown so much in half a year, but she felt unreasonably tall to Klaus who had not grown one inch.

“We have to be reasonable,” she said when Klaus joined her, stretching his legs out next to hers. “Lemony is right. Mother and Father are gone, or captured.”

Klaus refused to meet her gaze. Logically, she was right. With the tunnels as they were, there existed no reason he could think of for them not to be here by now, beyond their capture or death.

“The thing that burned The Espior, _our home_ ,” he blinked away tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “It was a _dragon_ , Violet.”

Violet’s face told Klaus more than her momentary quiet. She was a study in surrender, her normally pensive brow pulled up into a deplorably wistful sweep, above doleful eyes. Klaus could not yet tell if this was an ill brought about by her time away or something a good night’s sleep would cure, but he did not like the look on her.

“If they can be real, brought back from extinction,” he said, allowing his vision to blur this time, as this way he wouldn’t have to see Violet look so sad. “Allow me the more reasonable belief that our parents are alive. Somehow.”

“You’re right, Klaus.” When he rubbed his eyes she was smiling at her knees, a muted apology. “I wasn’t thinking for a moment. Forgive me?”

He wanted to tell her there was nothing to forgive, but sometimes that wasn’t the point. So he nodded instead, and took her hands to squeeze them, hoping it provided some comfort.

The next morning brought honeyed oatmeal and the return of Larry, with good news, bad news, and puzzling news.

“The bad news,” the Baudelaires said, as one.

“Please,” Sunny added, for she had just been learning her manners.

“The Count Olaf has taken up residence in your home,” Larry took a great swallow. “Such as it remains.”

“Olaf,” Lemony growled, rubbing the height of his brow.

Klaus thought to his studies, his maps, and found nothing there. “Where is there a House Olaf?”

“His _first_ name, Lordling,” Jacques explained, without condescension. “We know there are rulers of the lands beyond the Schism; a King and Queen. As far as we can tell, his is more of an...honorary title. He _claims_ his true house is Blackfyre.”

Klaus felt his brows knit together. “I’ve never heard the name.”

“A long dead house,” Jacques explained, and they each bowed their heads for a solemn second in silent commiseration. “A small branch of the Targaryens.”

“Targaryen or not,” Lemony cut in. “He doesn’t have a _dragon_ , that I can assure you.”

“He does now.” Larry gave the man a look that was verging on uncomplimentary. Larry was _tired_ , Klaus observed.

“But there’s good news?”

“Yes,” Larry smiled, turning his attention back to the children. “Wherever your parents are now, they left this.”

Klaus held one edge of the paper, Violet the other, while the top of Sunny’s head covered a large portion of its contents until Klaus gave it a gentle push down.

_Children--I/hope/this letter--finds you/well.--_

“It’s a code of some kind?” Violet asked, though the answer was obvious.

“I thought you may have the key.”

Between the three of them it still took a good few minutes to solve; their parents, for all their good, were paranoid people.

“This line, here,” Violet pointed. “Your father is the _sole son._ For _lack_ of activities, I _spat_ in the _spa_ until it looked like a _bogs eye_. Or does that say dog’s? Mother never writes this cramped.”

Sunny turned the page around, her fingers still sticky from the morning’s meal, and glared at the page. “ _Libary_ ,” she said, harsh and definitive.

“Library,” Violet corrected gently, taking the paper back and correcting the key on the first line. “ _Send them to the first library_.”

“The first library?” Three sets of eyes turned to Lemony and Jacques. “Where is that?”

They shared a long look before Jacques answered. “We don't know.”

“Bertrand was the only one of us who’d been,” Lemony said, “owing to his boyhood friendship with the most reclusive of the Denouement Dukes.”

“Then we’ll travel to the Uplands. Speak to them.”

“If you wait a month, my brother could take the three of you by sea.” Olivia stretched out a hand, and Violet could not tell if it was in earnest or if she simply had no wish to let the children leave her sight.

“A month?” Klaus couldn’t keep the unfettered shock from his voice, and Olivia looked shocked, herself, to hear it.

Violet pinched Klaus’ leg under the table and continued, more sedately. “Our parents clearly wanted us to do something urgently enough to leave us a message, regardless of what happened to them. I’m sorry, Olivia, but I don’t think we have a month.”

Lemony coughed into his hand, on the verge of saying something and, when all eyes settled on him, he did so. “Our sister, Kit, may be a resource for you. Rumour is she’s gotten... _close_ with one of the Denouements since she left the Reach.”

“Then we will find Kit.” Violet stood, hands clasped in front of her. Klaus looked to her, questioning, and saw that Lemony was doing the same. “She is a Snicket. I have no cause to distrust her.”

“We’ll go to the library,” Klaus nodded, turning his attention to Sunny who gave a quick nod of agreement. “We’ll find Kit.”

**Author's Note:**

> And the Baudelaire orphans (are they?!) find the library and learn they’re true Targaryens and bond with wyverns who may not be able to spit fire and fly but can do amazing things like _find what you need_ and _crush any rock_ and _steer you from trouble_. Thank you for reading! Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://feoplepeel.tumblr.com).


End file.
